Why Build a Custom RTOS in 2026?
Why build a custom RTOS when there are already tons of battle-tested ones like FreeRTOS or Zephyr available?
It’s a fair question, but there's much more to it than just reinventing the wheel. Building a kernel from scratch forces you to understand low-level hardware interactions, assembly context switching, and memory layout. It fundamentally transforms you into a better embedded firmware engineer, sharpens your low-level debugging skills (hello, hard fault handlers!), and gives you complete freedom to architect a system tailored to your exact specifications.
How to Get Started
If you've decided to embark on building your own RTOS, here are the three critical decisions you need to make first:
